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Massie: Readers don' know history

Mychal Massie
Columnist

If liberals and the despitefully misguided and uninformed were as smart as they like to think they are, they would have a better way of showing it. One avenue of showing it would be to have cogent, reasoned debate. But cogent, reasoned debate is not reflexively calling anything they do not like and/or have not heard before a lie; it’s not blaming George Bush, for everything including the seven-year locusts; and it isn’t blaming white people and slavery for problems black people may have (real or perceived).

It is also interesting that the fact-finding and researching studies they embark on are not for truth, but rather for whatever they can find that supports their errant and aberrant opinions. Most of these views are based on flawed and fallacious suppositions. Last week, a person commented on my blog with all of the intellectuality of an empty soup can. My apologies to the empty soup can. This person was upset because of the questions I had asked in my syndicated Daily Rant about Obama, entitled "Based On The Color of Obama’s Skin." (http://mychal-massie.com/premium/based-on-the-color-of-obamas-skin)

As I read what the person apparently believed passed as intelligent discourse, which included the obligatory name-calling, the depth of historical ignorance was staggering as the person raged about slavery and white oppression.

What the person’s diatribe excluded is that over 65,000 slaves fought on the side of the Confederates during the Civil War. And they did so without being conscripted. The person was obviously unaware that slaves were paid for their military service and some who served were paid more than Confederate officers. The person attacked me about how poorly the slave owners had treated slaves (and for dramatic effect I’m sure), the person opined how the slaves were many times sold naked on the trading blocks, and evil white men were able to shamelessly fondle the women. The person raged about slaves being separated from their families, and the family member never being seen by the family again.

But after all that, the person, as is typical of those big on vitriol and low on and facts, omitted key points. The writer overlooked (and that assumes he/she knew it to start with) that William Ellison was a successful Southern business owner and cotton farmer during slavery. Ellison engaged in slave breeding, which was a practice most white slave owners refused to participate in. But Ellison, himself a black man, saw nothing wrong with it. The person also overlooked that, in Louisiana, more than 3,000 freed slaves were themselves slave owners. The fact is large numbers of free blacks owned black slaves. The person overlooked that a black woman and her family owned one of the most profitable slave plantations in the history of America. The person also overlooked Anthony Johnson, a black man and slave holder, who in 1654-55, won a court suit in Northampton, Va., which is believed by many to have ushered in the legalization of slavery.

I could go on, but it’s not facts the person wanted. The person wanted to be angry and castigate me for having the audacity to expose Obama as I have been doing. I had a conversation Sunday morning past with a man whose first words to my face were that he would have nothing to do with me because he hated former President George Bush and anyone who had anything to do with him. The gentleman was full of knowledge, and almost every drop of it was wrong, going so far as to believe the photo the media (including Fox News) used of Trayvon Martin (i.e., the Cherub-faced 12-year-old) was what Martin looked like when George Zimmerman shot and killed him in self-defense.

I spent over an hour talking with the gentleman, breaking down his arguments, sharing facts, and refusing to become annoyed. At the end of our conversation, we shook hands, and he smiled warmly as I assured him I would be stopping back to see him and continue our conversation. He said he looked forward to it. As I have repeatedly said, inculcated ignorance and absolute contempt and denial of truth is the much of the problem. Rather than face the truth that blacks are human beings, and as such they are as capable (and likely) to commit the very same egregious offenses as anyone else — the black intelligentsia came up with cover-lies such as blacks didn’t really own slaves. What they really did was buy the freedom of family members. Allowing for the modicum of truth — apparently what they did after they bought the freedom of their family members, was to take ownership of them and put them back to work in the fields and sugar plantations.

But to admit this reality they would also have to admit they are no better than the whites they condemn.

Then, race-mongers and liberals would be in danger of losing a secure group of victims.

Mychal S. Massie is the former National Chairman of the conservative black think tank, Project 21-The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives; and a member of its’ parent think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research. You can find more at mychal-massie.